Delays at Tangguh LNG cause fewer shipments

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 4 -- Indonesia’s BP PLC-led Tangguh LNG project in Papua Barat will deliver just 16 cargoes of LNG this year—40 cargoes fewer than the 56 for which it was contracted.

Undisclosed problems at the plant’s production units have resulted in lower production, according to Ngurah Kresnawan, a spokesman for BP Indonesia, which operates the plant.

The Tangguh LNG plant is comprised of two trains with a combined production capacity of 7.6 million tonnes/year of LNG. BP launched Train 1 in February and Train 2 in July.

“When we launched Train 2 in July, we initially found quite a few problems, which we fixed right away. We expect to reopen Train 2 in the next few days,” Ngurah said.

“As we are concerned that an identical problem [would] occur in Train 1, we shut it down in August,” he said, adding, “We are carrying out the same maintenance at the first production unit and we expect to reopen Train 1 in October.”

Last month, Indonesia’s upstream oil and gas regulator BPMigas said a temporary shutdown of the Tangguh LNG plant could mean that buyers will receive their contracted supplies from Bontang LNG instead.

“We may swap the Tangguh LNG with LNG from the Bontang plant,” said BPMigas Chairman R. Priyono, who added that the agency is “still calculating the volume (OGJ Online, Aug. 13, 2009).”